Next message: Bruce Johnson: "[WinMac] Nothing to do with windows, but..."
On 10/23/00 5:49 AM, "Dan Schwartz" <Dan@BrakeAndGo.com> wrote:
> I'm not 100% sure on either issue. However, your Macs (most likely) already
> have USB 1.x ports; so daisy-chain your 1.x devices off the internal ports and
> the 2.0 devices off the PCI card to be safe.
Definitely, seeing as USB is so limited that way
>
> Keep in mind that there are very few (if any!) USB 2.0 devices; but they will
> give you IEEE-1394 ("FireWire" brand) speeds when available. To put it in a
> nutshell, USB 2.0 is Intel's answer to Apple's exhorbitant 1394 licensing
> fees...
Dan...Apple only charges to use the trademarked name "FireWIre", and it's
hardly exorbitant. They have never, nor could they have ever charged to use
IEEE 1394.
And USB will never give you true FireWire speeds, because,
a) It's still host reliant, so if the CPU is busy, your transfer speeds
drop, whereas 1394/FireWire is host independent, so you can go from point a
to point c without needing to route through point b.
B) FireWIre is able to handle multiple speed data streams because it's an
isochronus protocol, which is why it's so flexible compared to USB. So
besides digital cameras, you also have FireWire SANs, FireWire Networks,
etc.
This whole USB v FireWire is stupid, and I lay the blame on Intel's newly
acquired NIH syndrome. Instead of working to help improve an existing
standard for high-speed serial communications, 1394, and helping to increase
the adoption rate of USB 1.X, so as to finally free PC users from the
workarounds that parallel, serial, and PS/2 ports require, which would
*greatly* increase the reliability of PC hardware in general, instead, the
create a new version of USB, that is solving a problem that doesn't exist,
but this way, the solutions can all say *Intel* instead of TI/Apple/Intel.
And so, you'll have USB 2.0 ports, and Linux and the Mac, and other OS's
will support it almost right away, but because M$ will take three years, and
two new versions of winders to do it right, only non-windows people will be
using it right away, because the PC manufacturers won't put squat on the
motherboard until M$ fully supports it.
>
> I don't have an answer about the drivers: Some USB chipsets are directly
> supported by the MacOS kernel; while others require a patch (Extension) to
> work.
Actually, they use shared libraries, which are not extensions.
--
"Keecking butt fahr gudness"
Baldur's Gate
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: Mon Oct 23 2000 - 08:54:15 PDT